Lowe has Claire Williams full backing

The 2018 Formula One season has seen the Williams Martini team suffer one of their worst seasons in recent memory. The main person who has had to answer the criticism and questions as to what went wrong and how the team aims to turn things around has been team’s Chief Technical Officer, Paddy Lowe.

It has been a very difficult season for Lowe with every race been a very public showing of how bad the Williams team season is going. For Lowe he has been required to provide answers and his view point of this difficult season. His position was made even more difficult by the fact that the FW41 was the first car designed and built under his leadership.

Despite the lack of success and the apparent difficulties in turning things around Claire Williams, Deputy Team Principal of Williams Martini Racing, has publicly spoken of her continued support for Lowe.

In an interview with Formula 1.com Claire said" “Paddy is our CTO and I back him 100%. Paddy is a triple world championship-winning Technical Director. He’s inherited a team with some issues and weaknesses and it’s his responsibility to fix these issues as our CTO.”

Williams also acknowledges the fact that the process of turning things around is not going to happen overnight  but she is confident that the issues will be addressed and the performance of the FW41 will improve.

Claire added: “Giving someone a short time to do that and expect miracles is naïve. He needs more time to fix these issues. At the end of the day, we’re all relying on Paddy and his team of engineers.

“It’s those guys who make the car go faster. We need to make sure we give them everything we can resources-wise to do what they can to give us a good race car. I trust Paddy and his team will deliver.”

Despite a extensive list of departures from the design staff at the Williams team Lowe is confident that the team’s engineering’s department can make forward progress.

Lowe said: “We’ve done a lot of very good work, but when you go and look and the numbers, we’ve probably stood still relative to our competitors.”

“We’re not going to give up, but if we’re realistic, the idea of getting back towards the front of the midfield at this stage in the season is maybe not going to happen.

“So naturally, which happens anyway, a lot more focus moves to the following year.”